


Bianca's Second Worst Day

by whythursdaynext



Category: The Duff (2015)
Genre: Epilogue, F/M, Fluff, and I am so rooting for these two, and I was grinning like a fool at work while I was writing this, because I highly enjoyed this movie, happy endings, okay am I slightly ashamed of myself?, so here's to their future happiness, so you should enjoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 00:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4241961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whythursdaynext/pseuds/whythursdaynext
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Epilogue of Sorts. </p><p>Bianca's miserable day makes her decide to drive down to visit Wesley at school. An adorable moment commences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bianca's Second Worst Day

**Author's Note:**

> N.B. In the movie, Bianca saying they would be near each other if she goes to Northwestern and he goes to Ohio State is ridiculous, as anyone who would use Google maps would know. I’m operating under the assumption that going by Midwestern standards, she’d have to be within a 3 hour drive for the word “close” to even remotely qualify. Therefore, for my purposes, Bianca now goes to Case Western in Cleveland, which is within a reasonable driving distance. (Shoutout to my friends from Cleveland.) This is a COMPLETELY fictitious description of Ohio State, because I don’t remember where the freshman dorms are there, but people do live within walking distance of campus. There may or may not be a fountain there, but I made this up, so HA. Yes, I do realize that it's a little hypocritical for me to get worked up about driving distances and not the campus map of OSU, but in my defense... I have nothing. Judge me as you will. 
> 
> Also, in my headcannon, these two crazy kids are originally from Northern Michigan, which would explain Robbie Am- I mean, Wesley Rush’s Canadian/Upper Midwestern accent.

It was, objectively speaking, at 1:30 pm, already the worst day of Bianca’s college career, only missing out on the top spot in the “Worst Day of Entire Life” category because she’d had a truly horrible day thanks to a jealous bitch in high school and an unplanned viral video. She was too far away from home to rely on her usual panic standby, Think Rock. The next best thing was to call her boyfriend, Wesley.

“Hi, this is Wesley.”

“Hey, Wes, I know you’re probably busy-” she rattled off tear-stricken, only to be interrupted by the rest of his voicemail greeting.

“Dammit, Wesley,” she muttered over his reminder to leave a message or text him because that was way faster. She took a deep breath to calm her voice a little and waited for the beep.

“Hey Wes, it’s me. Bianca. You know… anyway, I know you’re probably busy or whatever, but I’ve had like, the worst day of college, or the second worst day of my life and I miss you so freaking much and just call me, okay? Bye.”

She hung up and took a few moments to breathe in and out in an attempt to stop panicking. It didn’t work too well. She ended up spending the next five minutes trying not to hyperventilate, hyperventilating, and then panicking because she couldn’t seem to breathe normally. She was having a panic attack, probably. She only suspected this because of the obnoxious orientation program that detailed all the ways stress could affect the body. Even though she didn’t exactly pay attention, enough had cut through her apathy to flare like warning signs across her brain: Shortness of breath. Adrenaline. Overwhelming anxiety. Great. Why did she have to get this shit as soon as she went to college? She had been completely fine before.

She sat cross-legged on the floor of her dorm room and waited for the waves of panic to stop washing over her for a good half an hour. Towards the end of the attack, as her mind was slowly regaining brain control, she began wondering why Wes hadn’t called her back yet. The anxiety tried to convince her that he was blowing her off, but she had regained enough composure to remember that Wes wasn’t the best communicator even at the best of times, and that it was entirely possible he was in class or at practice. After she was sure that she was calm again, she tried calling him again.

Voicemail. She checked the clock to verify that she’d already missed the first fifteen minutes of her next lecture, and laid back on the floor. It was at this moment that she had a crazy idea: since she’d already basically missed her class, she totally should go visit Wes in person. Surprise him. It would get her away from here and her awful day, and Wes had been texting her “I miss you” every other day for the past three weeks. Even if her day sucked, Bianca was capable of making it better.

The first hour flew by with a sing-along to her classic cult film soundtrack playlist and remarkably little traffic. The second hour was marred slightly by the cost of gas off 71, but she soothed her feelings with her Best of Disney CDs, which she’d kept since she was five. It wasn’t until she reached the outskirts of Columbus that she realized that Wes might still have class or practice or a fraternity rush event or something else to do tonight. Did this make her that crazy clingy high school girlfriend? Luckily, she’d just about ran out of panic for the day, and it wasn’t like she could turn around now.

She pulled into the parking lot of his building, trying to keep an eye out for his Jeep. She didn’t see it around, but it was a massive parking lot.

“Remain calm, Bianca,” she muttered to herself as pulled into a spot and cut the engine. She checked her phone since the gas station. Nothing. No voicemail. No text. Not even a Facebook notification. She would have thought he would have gotten back to her by now, and it was really… she took a deep breath again. Everything was going to be fine. She was only panicking because her body was still freaked out from earlier. Her boyfriend did not suddenly hate her.

She slumped in her seat and considered her next move carefully. She didn’t have a way past his building’s complicated keycard/security system to see if he was in his room, and she didn’t have his roommate’s cell number or anything to ask him where Wes was. She reluctantly decided to walk the few blocks over to the main campus and see if she could spot him there. It was a huge campus, and the likelihood of her actually tracking him down was slim-to-none, but walking around over there was much better than sitting here for who knew how long. Plus, sitting and waiting in the car always made her feel a little bit like a stalker.

She wandered over to campus and around the main quad for a good half hour before giving up. She plopped down on the fountain right by the entrance. It was starting to get late. Bianca looked around at the waves of people passing her by, wondering how she’d gotten here, semi-stalking her boyfriend, sitting on a fountain at a university she didn’t attend, when she should have been back at home, studying or eating dinner or something more normal.

Then her phone rang. The opening bars of “I’m Too Sexy” blared, startling her out of her fog of self-admonishment. It was, of course, Wes.

“Hey,” she said evenly into the phone, amazing herself with her own composure.

“Hey,” Wes answered. “I got your message. Well messages. All million of them.”

Bianca giggled nervously. “Oh, did I really leave that many? I must have been suffering from short term memory loss or Groundhog Day syndrome or a temporal loop or something.”

“Bee, I have only seen you this freaked once before in my entire life, and I’ve known you since basically forever,” Wes said, cutting to the chase. “Just let me get somewhere where I can hear you better,” Bianca could hear the rumble of background noise very clearly over the phone, “-and you can tell me the whole thing.”

“Well, it’s kind of a funny story,” Bianca started, “I bet you can’t guess what I’m doing right now.”

“I might just take you up on that bet,” Wes answered, yelling a little so she could hear him over the large collection of voices in the background. “What are we going to do for terms…” his voice suddenly trailed off.

“Wes? Wes?” Bianca stared at her phone to make sure she hadn’t accidentally ended the call.

“Bianca? Hey.”

“Yeah?” She rushed the phone back up to her ear.

“Hey Bee, one second.” Wes answered. And then he hung up.

Bianca stared at her phone for a few moments in disbelief. She finally stood and started walking back toward her car and Wes’s apartment. Honestly, the boy had the attention span of a gnat sometimes. Why did she even bother?

“Bee. Bee. BEE. BIANCA.”

She was so focused on walking and being annoyed that the sound of her name didn’t even register. Since she didn’t turn around and see who was yelling, she didn’t notice that Wes was trying to catch up with her. He was almost a foot taller and in way better shape, so it didn’t take long. He got in front of her, but she still didn’t notice he was there until she almost ran into him.

She jumped about three feet into the air, and almost screamed. “Wes?”

He grinned. “Holy shit, you-” The rest of her reaction was stifled by the massive hug Wes enveloped her in. She would have gladly stood there, face buried in his chest, for the next year, or at least the next hour, but Wes let her go a moment later.

“Hey you,” he said, almost bouncing. He was as excited as a puppy when seeing the family again. “Bianca, you drove all the way down here! On a school night, just to see me.” His smile somehow got wider.

“I… uh… yeah, pretty much,” Bianca said. “I was just having the absolute worst day, and you know how much I love to make impulsive decisions, so here I am.”

Wes nodded back at her. “Right,” he said, “Impulsive. Out-of-the-blue. Spontaneous.”

“Look at you, remembering all that SAT vocabulary,” she joked, then remembered the point. “Listen, Wes, if you’ve got stuff going on tonight or-”

“I am completely free, especially since my awesome girlfriend drove all the way from Cleveland to see me.”  He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and started walking again. “Come on, let’s go find some food- because I am hungry- and then you can tell me all about your sucky day, and then I can cheer you up some.” He stopped walking for a second to lean down and brush a kiss across her lips.

She smiled automatically and kissed him back. “We’re not going to Dave and Busters, are we?”

“Well, we would be, if Columbus had gotten its act together and gotten one already, which it hasn’t.”

“That sucks,” she said, leaning back underneath his arm. “What did you have in mind then?”

“Weeeelll, it lacks the perfect atmospheric lighting of Dave and Busters, but there’s this diner not too far from here, and it makes up for that flaw by making what I swear are the best burgers in all of Ohio.”

“Burgers. Yes, please.” She thought for a few steps. “You know, I don’t think I ate lunch today.”

“You missed a meal?” Wes said in mock shock. “That’s the sign that today was bad.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Bianca said, lightly wacking his perfect abs with the back of her hand. She slipped out from under his arm, instead reaching for his hand, so that they could get to the place with the food even faster. She took a step, but found herself being dragged back, Wesley smiling down at her.

“Hey, Bianca?”

“Yeah,” she said, now confused about where they were in the conversation.

“I love you.”

Bianca froze. She stared back at him. Blinked several times.

“Bianca?” Wes asked, a tinge of vulnerability creeping into his voice.

“It’s just that- it’s the first time- you-you know, and-” She paused, both to breath and as an attempt to get her brain to function on any sort of level.

“I know,” he answered quietly, “It just.. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, god, I missed you so much, Bee, and then you just showed up-”

Bianca cut him off by reaching up behind his neck, standing on her toes, and kissing him with every bit energy she had left.

“I know, Wes,” she said, when she finally let him go. He had a dazed expression on his face, but she plowed forward anyway. “I love you, too.”

He grinned back down at her, and then they made out in the middle of the path for a good five minutes, ignoring the wolf whistles and commentary from passerby. When they finally broke for air, Bianca leaned back. “Okay, as much as I am enjoying this, I am still really hungry, and earlier you said something about burgers…”

Wes laughed. “Oh, good. I was definitely starting to think about those burgers, too.”

“God, I love you,” Bianca said, kissing him again.

 

They eventually did make it to the diner, where the burgers had both bacon and cheese, and where Bianca realized that what had started as one of her worst days ever had ended as one of her best.

 

 


End file.
